Web App Security Firm Netsparker Raises $40 Million

Web application scanner company Netsparker announced on Thursday that it has raised $40 million from San Francisco-based growth and private equity firm Turn/River.

Netsparker was founded by Ferruh Mavituna, Peter Edgeler and Mark Lane in London, England in 2009, with Mavituna's working proof-of-concept for a new approach to finding web vulnerabilities without false positives. This involves first locating the vulnerability and then exploiting it to provide proof: it combines the related but different concepts of vulnerability scanning and penetration testing to eliminate false positives. The first commercial version of the product was launched in 2010.

Now with offices in London, Austin TX, and Turkey, Netsparker will use the new funding for further product development, sales growth and new marketing initiatives.

“Netsparker’s solution combines unique Proof-Based Scanning Technology with enterprise workflow tools, making it the only scalable web security solution on the market," comments Mavituna, now CEO at Netsparker. "With overwhelming market demand for this solution in the face of increasing security and compliance regulations, such as Europe’s GDPR, Netsparker aims to become the de facto solution for enterprises that need to secure thousands of web applications at scale.

"Turn/River Capital’s expertise in growing similar companies," he continued, "such as website security platform Sucuri, makes them a perfect match for this market expansion."

"Netsparker’s industry-leading vulnerability detection rates have won over a rapidly expanding, loyal base of thousands of enterprises that trust Netsparker with a mission-critical part of their security," added Dominic Ang, Turn/River Capital's founder and Managing Partner.

In January 2018, test results of independent researcher and analyst Shay Chen's Web Application Vulnerability Scanner Evaluation Project (WAVSEP) were published. "Netsparker was the only scanner that identified all the vulnerabilities and one of two that did not report any false positives," announced Netsparker.

Kevin Townsend is a Senior Contributor at SecurityWeek. He has been writing about high tech issues since before the birth of Microsoft. For the last 15 years he has specialized in information security; and has had many thousands of articles published in dozens of different magazines – from The Times and the Financial Times to current and long-gone computer magazines.